When you enter a museum or gallery, you expect to see finished works of art, objects that are the end results of thoughtful conception and skilled execution by an artist, sometimes completed years in the past. Lotus L. Kang conceives of her work as a permanent state of transformation: no piece is ever finished. To enter her current exhibition at the Frye Art Museum, “Lotus L. Kang: I hear the hollow boom of time,” is to experience it in the moment. The next moment will not be the same.
Kang is of Korean descent, born in Toronto, educated in Canada and the U.S., and now living and working in Brooklyn. She imbues her work with cultural and material influences from each of these places. She has built an illustrious resume of international exhibitions capped by the current Venice Biennale. Her work is in the collections of major museums. Kang simultaneously works in photography, sculpture and installation. While she may pursue a theme or body of work over a period of years, each exhibition responds to the space in which it is shown.
The Frye exhibition comprises two major installations bridged by a gallery of smaller two-dimensional pieces. The work both embodies and symbolizes change. This state of flux is expressed in Kang’s subject matter and sources of inspiration as well as the materials and processes she uses. The first installation, Molt is made up of seven individually titled sculptures forming an environment that viewers can wander through. Industrial-scale film over four feet wide is layered and suspended over rods at different heights. Kang creates images on the films by exposing them to natural and artificial light in various locations such as her studio and a greenhouse, in a process she calls “tanning.” The film develops bands of warm color punctuated by the shadows of random objects such as leaves and raindrops. The film is not fixed, so it continues to change color as it is exhibited, adding impressions of nearby objects and fixtures. Tatami mats form the base of sculptures set among the suspended films; some are actual straw tatami, others are mirror surfaces in tatami-size modules. The mats support collections of found or cast objects: ceramic birds, bottles and food containers, kelp and lotus root. All the elements represent transient states, whether moveable tatami, throwaway commodities, or rootless plants. Both the film and tatami-based sculptures incorporate pieces of past works. They may be rearranged and reworked into new iterations for future exhibitions.
The second installation, Azaleas IIII, is inspired by a 1925 poem of the same name by Korean poet Kim Sowol. Composed during Japan’s occupation of Korea, it describes a woman scattering azaleas as she mourns a lost lover. Kang drew on her photography background to create a kinetic sculpture based on a film-dryer used to process analog film. The cylindrical cage-like structure is wrapped with tightly spaced strips of 35 mm film and rotates, backlit by three changing light sources that project moving images on the walls and ceiling of the darkened gallery, literally a dark room. The cyclical patterns of projected light are mesmerizing. References to the poem are oblique. The film is imprinted with images of flowers (but not azaleas) and the rotation is timed to the rhythm of lines from the poem.
In a conversation with artist Nour Mobarak and curator Georgia Erger, Kang admitted that she often “hates” her own work when she first sees it exhibited. Knowing that the work will continue to evolve allows her to accept it in the moment. As Kang puts it: “We are porous beings . . . always in a state of becoming in relation to other bodies and the environment around us.”
Kang’s work is visually arresting and thought-provoking and can be appreciated as a conventional one-off viewing experience. Internalizing that it is in a continuous state of flux will be a change of mindset for many viewers, but it’s certainly a metaphor for our times.
Lotus L. Kang: I hear the hollow boom of time is at the Frye Art Museum through September 27. Information at FryeMuseum.org. Admission to the Frye is always free.
